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Comment Re:Misc Titles (Score 1) 796

Came to add The Source. Since you've already mentioned it, I'll just add that it's my favourite book of all time. I've read it at least 6 times and I've wound up with two copies of it in my "library" of a couple of dozen books.

Another favourite which isn't yet in the comments is Sarum by Edward Rutherford.

Comment Re:Firefox - Too little, too late (Score 1) 330

Chrome spawns one thread for each tab, extension and plug-in in addition to a "Browser" thread and a "GPU Process" thread. A summary of the processes is provided in Chrome's task manager (Shift + Esc or right-click on Chrome's chrome and select Task Manager).

Chrome uses significantly more resources than Firefox however it does not suffer from the horrid memory leaks that have plagued Firefox for years: Mozilla Gets "Tough" on Firefox Memory Leaks

As the article states, the memory leaks are a well-known problem. It's an issue that the developers do not seem to be able to fix.

Chrome's performance is exceptional and stable. Firefox's performance is also exceptional at first launch but it can degrade in a matter of minutes to a choppy, annoying experience. If you're using Firefox and haven't already done so, try the Memory Restart add-on. Be sure to display the add-on bar to watch the memory inflate. In my experience, performance starts to degrade around 600 MB.

In a world where RAM is dirt cheap, Chrome is welcome to all it wants to use as long as it maintains its performance. I have 8 GB of RAM installed and rarely see total usage beyond 3 GB.

I switched to Chrome yesterday after at least five years of primary Firefox usage. I'm a bit sad to leave Firefox behind, but I had tired of restarting it four or five times a day just to keep the memory in check.

Ironically, it was the Google toolbar that had kept me tied to Firefox for the last year. I'm now using the Context Search extension in Chrome to achieve similar functionality to the Google toolbar "buttons" in Firefox.
Canada

Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans 363

John Bayko writes "Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumors in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients. It showed extremely positive results in four of them. This episode raises the question of what happens to all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it, if not to actual cancer research like this."

Comment KISS (Score 1) 436

An array can be easily randomized in JavaScript by simply assigning a fixed random number to each element of the array:

function randomizeArray(a){var i,b=[];for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)b.push([a[i],Math.random()]);b.sort(randomizeArraySort);for(i=0;i<b.length;i++)b[i]=b[i][0];return b;}

function randomizeArraySort(a,b){return a[1]<b[1]?-1:a[1]>b[1]?1:0;}


usage example:

alert(randomizeArray(["a","b","c","d","e"]));
Power

Creating Electric Power From Light Using Gold Nanoparticles 77

cyberfringe writes "Professor of Materials Science Dawn Bonnell and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered a way to turn optical radiation into electrical current that could lead to self-powering molecular circuits and efficient data storage. They create surface plasmons that ride the surface of gold nanoparticles on a glass substrate. Surface plasmons were found to increase the efficiency of current production by a factor of four to 20, and with many independent parameters to optimize, enhancement factors could reach into the thousands. 'If the efficiency of the system could be scaled up without any additional, unforeseen limitations, we could conceivably manufacture a 1A, 1V sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long,' Prof. Bonnell explained. The academic paper was published in the current issue of ACS Nano. (Abstract available for free.) The significance? This may allow the creation of nano-sized circuits that can power themselves through sunlight (or another directed light source). Delivery of power to nanodevices is one of the big challenges in the field."

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